I wanted to show everyone these things, but I also wanted to see what people out there can do themselves. So I'm going to throw a contest to see who can make the coolest 3D object or scene that is related to CB.

PRIZE:
300k [Edit: +$2m from Admin]

RULES/CRITERIA:

Atleast 75% of the scene/object is made by you, I don't want pre-made models entered into this. (You can use pre-made models for people and other complex premade objects, but only as side-props, not as the main attraction)

Enter as many times as you want

If you decide not to put colors on your objects atleast make them damn interesting.

I want it CB-related, if even just loosely CB-related.

This contest will end around the end of the month (same as that other big-name contest)

I would gladly accept contributions to the pot, seeing as I don't have a lot of money. It would really be cool to see what the community can make. If more people enter, I'll up the pot to 500k or 700k :)

Some people live in a box when it comes to programming, they know everything in their box, but nothing outside it. I still think OpenGL is rather.. umm widely accepted as a standard, so thats bizarre that they wouldn't have made it using that. Anyways, doesn't wine let you imitate DirectX?

<Blast_[Vestax]> It costs $100k if you DON'T enter my contest.. so you better..
<YOU> oh okie entering now
<OB's_Genie> so.. you will go through all of CB CMing everyone to send you 100k because they didn't enter? crazy. ;)
Caedmon has joined the room.
<Blast_[Vestax]> Nothing helps a contest like FUD..

Agreed, I'd like to use an alternative program that I already have to make mine (more because I use dialup and it would take 200+ years to download anything above 3 MB than anything else) - so is that acceptable?

My PC is a 400Mhz AMD K6-2, with 3DNow! technology. In terms of 3D, it starts with the name and ends there. But hey, here's my own '3D' masterpiece. App used was notepad, drawn using my keyboard. Enjoy ;)

If you are going to participate in this contest, I would you to provide a wireframe version in addition to the solid rendered version. We will check the wireframe to make sure that everyone made what they said they made. ;)

Man, its so hard to find good camera angles with tall objects! I'll provide my wireframes a bit later on. I did also offer th00p my original 3D files, but I'm considering making it public to everyone here =D. Enjoy!

Ya know, I should make a wall of CB armory/weaponry. That'd be fun... maybe I will if more contests are held for art. Let's bring out the artist of CB players!

Well now that Pixel Sage posted his shield I guess I can follow with my own.

I decided to try to do something to experiement with ray tracing and lighting a little bit. The shield and sword are complete 3d models and I have wireframes available. All the shadowing, lighting and reflections were generated as part of the modeling process to to create more interest in the renderings.

not to hijack the forum, but I was having trouble formatting the HTML for my post, so I forgot to include the title for the photos "Impending Doom" as you can see the fireball coming from behind in the reflection on the sword and shield ;)

Not sure if anyone has used lightwave or not, but the thing I like most about it is there are two seperate programs. One for the actual modeling, and one where you send your models for texturing, and layout for rendering.

It gives you a better feeling of an actual "film studio" and allows you to utilize scripting for lighting effects, and motion.

I don't know how blender is, but the older versions of maya was all in one, as well as brice, and poser...

I wanted to post a photo of the sturdy Axbow, and mighty seeker arrows in all their current prosperity!! Anyone that is using, or used an Exbow, feel free to replace Assassin with Executioner as you see fit.

here are the wireframes as well

Any questions or comments let me know. I'm glad this contest came along, it has been a while since I did any modeling, and it was good to get back into it for a while. Good luck everyone, and lets see some more 3D!!!

Since I previously provided wires for both of these objects, I don't believe I need to provide wires for this specific setup. If it is required, however, let me know and I will provide it. I'm just too lazy to export one now =P

I am not judging on "Number of Entries" that would be retarded. As far as the other criteria goes, I want you all to try your best. So far I'm pleased with the turnout we've gotten from this contest, I hope there are some last minute stragglers that are still going to enter. :)

Now, to be fair... this contest seemed like it was geared more towards people who haven't used 3D before, although I see that some people have entered who have done 3D before... I do it for a living, but not this sort of thing. This was more or less new territory to me, but I was quite pleased with the end result. I was going for a still that I made a long time ago, but couldn't find the source files, so I recreated it, but better :)

I'm fine if this is disallowed to be an entry in the official contest (because it's an animation, because I've been doing this for a while, etc) but had to share it anyway. If it is allowed, all the better. :)

FYI: It was done in Cinema 4D with metaballs and thinking particles. The first full test took about 5 hours to render, the second one (shown here) took just under an hour.
Hope you like it. (and I hope all the links work)

ascent - I haven't found metaballs extremly useful in lightwave either. The only time I use them is for extremly "blobuous" objects like slugs, pickles etc..

The other somewhat offbeat use I have found is to create a metaball in a seperate layer than my object, when a target is needed for motion paths or scripts. In the layout view, I set the metaball to be "not seen by camera" parent the object to the metaball, and use the metaball to create the motion.

There is an object called a null which is available in layout that is truly designed to be used for the process I described above, and is automaticaly invisible to everything, but sometimes when designing collisions etc., it is easier to have something in the design window (nulls are only available in layout) to optimize positioning of multiple objects, and create a motion path.

Anyway seeing what you did with the metaballs I am modifying the fireball from my first model I submitted and may create an avi movie of a fireball engulfing the camera just for fun. I am essentially doing what I described above, using a single transparent metaball to parent a volumetric light (the fireball) and constrain the area of the light output...

We will see what happens, as you may know rendering a single volumetric light with no other objects in the scene can be a VERY lengthy process depending on the textures used. I created a quick example last night that was upwards of 3 minutes per frame rendering time (3 hours per second of video to create a scene)

well I went to bed last night with like 10 frames left to render, and when I checked it this morning, it was finished, but somehow the AVI file was corrupted?

The reason I think it was corrupted is that I rendered it using a MS MPEG 4 V3 codec I have used a bunch of times in the past (even used it on test renders for this scene), when trying to play the file it tells me codecs not found. If I view the file details for the Avi, the data rate is listed at 1kbps... the other files I have are in the 200's so I don't know what happened.

This thing took way to long to render, so I may have to drop some of the textures on the lighting, and figure out how to get the "network rendering" features set up to work over a wireless network with lightwave.

Ohh well, hopefully someone will run another contest in the future I can use it for, but I am going to try to get it rendered now, from the scenes I was seeing rendered, I think it is gonna look pretty cool.

velvet pickle:
you should try rendering out to individual images instead. You can then use something like VirtualDub (free, at www.virtualdub.org) to compile them all back into a movie (and do some basic effects as well). It's a pretty good tool, and it's open source, though I believe it's windows only.

While I'm on the topic of free/open source handy graphical tools, I should mention Jahshaka, which I saw when it first started (and there wasn't much to see!) but they've recently released version 2RC3, and it's quite nice and very usable. It's a compositing/editing type program. I've been using it for loading up alpha channel image sequences (rendered animations) and putting a background behind it, or adding effects like blurring, etc. It's not after effects (which I don't have) but it's not $700, either (which is why I don't have it ;-) -- you can find it at www.jahshaka.org.
As for the contest.... there are great entries all around... nice job, everyone.

I am re-rendering it and saving individual frames now rather than making an avi file in one shot.... but thanks for the heads up Ascent....

I think we should come up with a cool 3d animation or 5 for the loading of CB.... something that would hook potential new users attention, but could be checked not to be displayed for the Vets that don't want to see it all the time?? Jon??

velvetpickle, movie animations on front page is a web no-no. I don't want to have to load up a movie or a large animation each time I visit the website front page (such as from computers at school and such). Movies should never be unsolicited, which is partly why flash ads get so annoying.

Otherwise, I'd like to see what you could cook up. You may have sparked interest for me to try and make one too... we'll see =D

*th00p_Dotson thinks that Pixel Sage and velvetpickle are in a league of their own, and that he should not be mentioned in the same sentence, except for something along the lines of "Hey, Pixel Sage and velvetpickle are about 900,000 times better at 3D rendering than that crazy little th00p_Dotson.

I just think a small quick animation would be cool for first time visitors Pixel... have a link right below it that says "don't show this animation again". But the animation could be changed every month or few months and everyone would have to see it again :)

and thanks thoop... I have spent countless hours messing around with model after model that never materialize into anything. Also have spent a great deal of time working on tutorials and reading about others models online.

Actually velvetpickle, I think you can set it up so the movie only loads if you click it. Apple does it on their website, so it may be very possible for the front page as well. Of course, you may want to check with Jonathan to see if this is a good idea.

Thanks all! Awesomeness! 2.3mil to use for my own art contests, mwahahaha. I think I'll hold special Carnage Blender 3D (haha, Blender 3D) contests for cb.pixelsage.com. Or maybe I'll use the winnings by selling them to make cards for people, so you all get a discount. Hmmmm choices choices...

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